Effective advertising

I originally had a large blog post planned. It was going to cover the entire history of Apple’s ad campaign and I would comment on the good and bad. That proved to be long and boring. So, I’ll just say straight out what I think of Apple’s most recent Intel Mac ad: It sucks.

How, you may ask, does an honest mac-loving person like me consider Apple’s newest mac ad to suck? Well, consider this: You’re walking down a street and somebody tells you that your new shoes are horribly designed, should never have been made, and are used for stupid purposes. The lively man whips out a pair of Apple shoes (I’d just like to confirm that this is not a real product. At least not yet.) and says that you should/should have bought these instead. They use brand-new Intel soles that make other soles look pale in comparison. Think of the possibilities. I think such a conversation would end up in much pain and possibly and probably an unnecessary amount of blood.

I personally think, that for consumers, Apple’s machines are far better designed then the average Windows PC’s. That and the integration of their sofware with their hardware (which is only really possible with a closed hardware system) plus Mac OS X makes, in my opinion, a much better computer with a far nicer and simpler, and just plain fun, user experience.

As for IBM’s chips getting faster, there’s alot more to Apple’s choice of Intel over PPC. Neither IBM nor Motorolla Freescale really had any big or aggressive mobile market, which is rapidly increasing in popularity. It’s very important for any PC company (except for maybe some of the boutique vendors like Alienware and Falcon Northwest) to take this part of the market into serious consideration if it wants to stay profitable in the long-term.

And then there’s Viiv, Intel’s new architecture for digital media. Viiv would be ideal for a Mac DVR that you would hook up to your TV, allowing you to stream content directly to the computer and letting you watch it on your big-screen tv. This would get Apple into the living room, which has been somewhat of a dream for most pc vendors.

You should also understand that the meaning of this post was not for me to say that I dislike some of Apple’s computers, or don’t consider them a company that doesn’t very good products, but just one that just can’t seem to advertise the mac (and really, only the mac) very effectively as of recently.

However, I am glad that you don’t consider a standard Apple drone that loves to talk about how much Apple kicks ass *buy Apple stock*. :p 🙂

You should have made your comment the post Kumaran, it is much more thought provoking than the post itself.

Personally I think the commercial is well done. It sticks to Apple’s theme of insulting other companies. I mean sure it’s much more overt an insult than 1984, but I think you need that now-a-day. One of the biggest things Apple has to do with the Intel chip is convince it’s old users that it in fact was a good decision. The comercial tries to do that and I think is good at going about it. The second thing Apple has to do is attract people who are frustrated with their dull PCs and have money to blow on Macs. The comercial accomplishes that as well by agreeing with the consumer’s dislike of their computer and offering an overpriced alternative.

For the sake of simplicity (and because there are some views in here that many people seem to believe, but in actuality, aren’t anything more than mere beliefs perpetuated by old myths), I’m going to go through this piece by piece.

“Personally I think the commercial is well done. It sticks to Apple’s theme of insulting other companies.”

Really? I’d love to see some examples of this theme. I mean, sure, they’ve definitely had their fun, poking at Microsoft and Dell, but never have they actually done this in an ad. Or at least, they’ve never done it in an ad in such a blatant and tasteless way.

“One of the biggest things Apple has to do with the Intel chip is convince it’s old users that it in fact was a good decision.”

And the Mac-fans have largely pledged their support. Spend some time around Mac-forums and Mac-related websites and you’ll see that more than 95% of the Mac community is sticking with Apple and believe that their switch to Intel chips was a good move.

“The second thing Apple has to do is attract people who are frustrated with their dull PCs and have money to blow on Macs. The comercial accomplishes that as well by agreeing with the consumer’s dislike of their computer and offering an overpriced alternative.”

Leaving the unnecessary comment about ‘overpriced alternatives’ aside, catering to this market isn’t going to get them anywhere near as far as if they were to cater to the general PC market. I mean, sure there are plenty of people who are fed up with their computers, but they’ve been subjected to these problems for so long that they think that a computer is inherently problematic. That’s exactly why ads such as this and this are so much better. They get the points across without resorting to petty, low punches.